Moments of Grace: Ashes and Dust
by Parlanchina
Summary: Still a little homesick, Agent Pearce is beginning to settle into her new role in the BAU. But as the team head to San Francisco to catch a serial arsonist, she is forced to confront her recent past. A past that she would rather forget. A past that she has come to America to escape. A past that she isn't sure she wants her new-found friends to know about...
1. The Bat-Phone

**Chapter 1 – The Bat-Phone**

**Disclaimer – This is the second in my experimental Moments of Grace Series, in which I'm rewriting the episodes (with a few of my own thrown in) with all the stuff I yell at the dvd player. Standard rules apply: don't like, don't read – do like, let me know! **

**Come on – we both know that if I wrote for CM I wouldn't be on here (well, I probably would be, but I'd be writing something else entirely); also I have no money, so suing me would be rather pointless.**

**Enjoy :)**

**Essential Listening: Boadicea**

0o0

_**The torture of a conscience is the hell of a bad soul – John Calvin**_

**0**

SSA Grace Pearce, late of the London Metropolitan Police and newly sworn in member of the FBI, rolled over, groaning.

As grateful as she was to the FBI for putting her up, the bed in the cadet hall was not the most comfortable she had ever slept on. For one thing, it was a lot more like a sack of potatoes than a mattress.

Blearily, she reached across to the bedside table and groped for her phone, which was what had woken her. Out of habit, she checked the name on the screen before answering it: _J. Jareau_.

"Hey JJ," she said, groggily.

"Sorry to wake you," said JJ's voice. "But we've got a bad one – the team's heading in."

"Sure, no worries," said Grace, already up and stuffing things into a bag.

"Bring a go-bag, we're going to California."

Grace indicated that she would, and hung up.

_Well, California_, she thought.

As tough as her new job was, she seemed to have found the cheapest way of seeing every part of North America she could imagine – and many that she couldn't. It was a bit of a shame that every city she visited would forever be associated with a series of fresh corpses, but you couldn't have everything. It wasn't as if the gorier side of police work was new to her, after all.

She hopped into the shower, grateful that the FBI training facility was so close to the building that the BAU called home. Generally, she had about half an hour more to play with in the morning as her colleagues commuted across Washington.

0o0o0o0

"Hey, 007!"

Grace grinned and turned around. The throng of mildly confused FBI agents in the corridor parted to let Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia pass. She was wearing her characteristically bright and cheery clothing and an equally characteristic bright and cheery smile.

Many of the agents turned away again with smiles on their faces. Garcia was impossible not to like, no matter how hard you tried.

"Hi," said Grace, as her friend caught up. "Nice dress."

"Thanks! One of the benefits of never leaving the tech-cave, I don't have to look respectable." She made a face at the sea of suits around her. "It's so boring."

"You get used to it," said Grace, as they climbed into the lift.

"You keep telling yourself that," Garcia quipped, with a sassy grin. "You all look like the personality's been ironed out of you."

Grace laughed and stuck her tongue out at Garcia, glad they were at the back of the lift and none of the other agents could see her do it. Garcia beamed, delighted to elicit such a childish response.

"How're you settling in?" she asked, as the lift ground into action.

"Oh, you know, alright," said Grace, who had been fighting homesickness for the better part of three weeks.

Garcia's expression suggested that she didn't believe her, and Grace offered the analyst a wry smile.

"Even the plug sockets are wrong here," she whined, and Garcia laughed.

"Says you," she said. "You found an apartment, yet?"

"No," Grace sighed.

Between learning the layout of Quantico, figuring out how to get her desk drawers to open, reading through every document on profiling that she could find and spending time with one or two of her new team-mates she hadn't had a lot of time for flat-hunting. The few places she'd seen so far had either been small and run-down or ruinously expensive. She supposed that it came of trying to find a place in the nation's capital.

"What you need is some local knowledge," said Garcia, brightly, tapping the side of her nose. "Hey, I know – why don't you and I do brunch on Saturday and have a hunt?"

"That sounds great, thanks," Grace grinned. "As long as brunch doesn't turn out to be some new, hideous form of aerobics."

Garcia laughed as they stepped out of the lift.

"Don't worry, generally it involves muffins," she said, and Grace laughed, too.

The BAU was more or less deserted, although the light was on in Hotch's office.

Garcia followed her gaze.

"JJ will have called him first, to get the go-ahead for the case," she explained. "The other will take a little longer – they live further out."

Grace nodded, wondering how it was that even at six in the morning SSA Aaron Hotchner still managed to look like he'd stepped out of some kind of FBI styling machine. She could see him leaning over a case file at his desk, shirt without a crease, tie making a perfect parallel with his jacket, not a hair out of place.

"I'll see you in the briefing," Garcia said, walking off down the corridor. "Ciao!"

Grace chuckled, reflecting that the BAU would be a much darker place without Garcia.

She dropped her go-bag under her desk and checked her emails. There were a ridiculous number, considering that she hadn't been a part of the team for even a month.

She was almost done when the rest of the team trickled in.

"You're in early," said SSA Emily Prentiss, wearily, dropping into her seat.

"Didn't have far to come," said Grace, smiling.

"Still living in the training house?" Prentiss asked with a grimace.

"Sadly."

"That's rough."

"What's rough?" SSA Derek Morgan asked, heading over. He handed Prentiss a coffee. It looked like he and Dr Spencer Reid had stopped off at a coffee shop en-route.

"Oh, thank God," said Prentiss, greedily inhaling the fumes.

"I'm still living with the cadets," Grace explained.

"Oh, man. I do not miss that," said Morgan, with sympathy.

"Not having much luck with the house hunt?" Reid asked, carefully putting another Styrofoam cup on Grace's desk.

She shook her head and smiled.

Ever since they'd got back from New Orleans*, Reid had brought her a tea on the way into work as a quiet gesture of friendship.

"Thanks."

"No problem."

She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he shrugged out of his jacket. He looked healthier than he had when they had first met, less drawn out.

She had had more of a front row seat in her new friend's recovery than the others – and more than either of them had really expected. After an initially rocky start – not helped by Grace's mouth, which often got her into trouble, or Reid's unfortunate Dilaudid addiction – they had quickly become fast friends.

They didn't really talk about it. They didn't really need to.

She was determined to be there when he needed her, whenever she could. She had even camped on his sofa a couple of times, early on, when he had been afraid to be alone.

As happy she was at his continued improvement, it had made her first few weeks at Quantico a little exhausting. It was one of the reasons that she'd had so little time for flat-hunting.

"Alright, everyone," Hotch called, leaving his office and nodding towards the meeting room.

They followed him mutely, the coffee not entirely making up for their lack of sleep. Grace took a tentative sip of her peppermint tea. It had taken Dr Reid less than three days to work out her favourite tea, despite simultaneously dealing with some extreme withdrawal symptoms and still trying to put on a brave face at work at the time. It was astonishing, really, how little time he'd missed from the BAU. She had to hand it to him, he really was a genius.

They took their seats around the table, grimacing at the fresh round of gruesome images in front of them. Garcia, who had returned from her lair with her notes, was suddenly a lot less perky.

Grace slowly pulled one of the photographs towards her, fighting the sudden ringing in her ears. The ex-person in the image was charred and blackened, face contorted in death.

Carefully, she placed the picture back down on the desk and reclaimed her tea, suddenly needing its warmth and the sharp sweetness of the peppermint to steady her mind and breathing. She exhaled the steam just as carefully, fervently hoping that no one had seen her change in demeanour. No one needed to see her go to pieces this early in the morning.

"Two fires, two families in three weeks," said JJ, working the digital display at the front of the room. "The first family, the Jarvises, all died."

A photograph of a happy family unit flickered onto the screen. Grace looked away after a moment, pretending, instead, to glance over at the door as SSA Jason Gideon stalked in.

"Last night, the Cutlers," JJ continued, changing the picture. Three more happy faces beamed out at them. "Only one survivor, Charlotte Cutler. She's in critical condition with burns to over sixty percent of her body."

JJ sat down as the team as a whole grimaced and tutted. The odds of survival for Mrs Cutler were not high.

"Well, it's no accident," said Prentiss, heavily, scanning through the file. "It's the same MO. No fuses, kerosene… multiple points of origin. Families targeted at home while they slept…"

"Coward," Grace muttered, breathing in more peppermint, willing her head to stop reeling.

She could almost taste the smoke.

"The Bay Area has a serial arsonist," said Hotch, soberly.

"Statistically, ninety-four percent of all serial arsonists are male," said Reid. "Seventy-five percent are white and few, if any, are ever caught."

"Few?" Prentiss asked, surprised. "You don't have a percentage?"

Grace glanced at Reid, glad of the distraction.

"Sixteen percent," he admitted. "And those sixteen percent set thirty-plus fires before they're ever apprehended. I'm trying to be more conversational," he added, to Prentiss.

"Oh," said Prentiss, shaking her head slightly. "It's not working."

Morgan and Garcia smirked at the light-hearted dig; even Grace smiled slightly, though mostly because Reid glanced in her direction.

"Most serial arsonists don't intend to inflict harm," said Prentiss, getting back on track. "Injuries or death, those are accidental. It's not about violence."

"For this one it is," said Hotch.

"Fire as a weapon," Grace mused, quietly. "Difficult to control, almost as dangerous to the UnSub as the victims."

"It's also about power," Gideon agreed. "Seeing the destructive force of their fires. Watching the chaos. For them, fire's just a substitute for sexual release."

"Oh, great," said Garcia, in disbelief. "So, if these guys don't get laid, they start fires?"

"Or in this case, burn entire families to death," Gideon confirmed. Gideon looked away, embarrassed.

"No statistic?" Prentiss asked Reid.

"No, they don't have statistics on this guy," said Gideon, as Reid shook his head. "One of a kind."

"Thank God," said Garcia, and Grace nodded, her head filled with heat and smoke.

"Three weeks ago this serial arsonist escalated into a serial killer whose weapon is fire," Reid summarised. "Why?"

"A major event," said Hotch, simply. "Possibly the break-up of his primary sexual outlet. A separation, a loss…"

"Might also have coincided with some trauma at work," Grace speculated. "If fire is about power then watching these people die is going to make him feel almost God-like. I'm betting he feels pretty powerless in his everyday life."

"Classic overcompensation," Morgan observed.

"Alright," said Gideon, moving them forward. "What about the victims?"

"SFPD can't connect the Jarvises and the Cutlers," said JJ, going over the file in front of her. "But – uh – witnesses put an unidentified late model gold sedan near both fires."

"Run the car," said Hotch. "Garcia, run the victims through your system. If there's a connection we need to find it."

"Yes, sir," said Garcia, fitting her glittery pen between her teeth and gathering her notes.

"Reid – victimology," Hotch continued as the team began to make a move towards the door. "I'll go see Charlotte Cutler."

"You took the burn ward last time," Gideon interjected.

"It's alright, I got it," said Hotch, glancing across at his friend. Grace caught a glimpse of him frowning down at the picture of Charlotte Cutler as she followed Morgan out of the room.

She guessed she wasn't the only one facing a tough day.

Gideon took her to one side as they passed his office.

"You have your firearms certification?" he asked, as she followed him inside.

Grace nodded; the shiny new gun on her belt suggested as much, so she knew that Gideon hadn't brought her here to talk about that.

She glanced around as he collected files together. The room was covered in books – mostly in cases, some in piles. Case notes and photographs lined the walls and lay haphazardly on the desk and coffee table. It was as if there hadn't been enough room in Gideon's head to keep it all in, and some of it had spilled out into the physical world. There were rows of photographs in brightly coloured frames opposite his desk.

Survivors, Grace guessed.

"You gonna be okay out there?"

"Sir?"

He pinned her with a searching look, and – not for the first time – Grace wondered whether he really could read minds.

"I read your file," he said, after a moment. "I'd imagine fire wouldn't be one of your strong points right now."

Grace glanced involuntarily down at Gideon's desk, frowning slightly. She really needed to get her hands on a copy of that file.

"I'll manage," she said, once again meeting his steady gaze.

After a moment's scrutiny, he nodded.

"I need to know my agents can handle themselves in the field," he said, plainly. "If you get into trouble, need to take a step back… you'll let me know?"

"Yes sir," said Grace, though she was aware that it hadn't really been a question.

"Okay," said Gideon, turning back to his files. "Wheels up in twenty."

0o0o0o0

*See Moments of Grace: Jones, or just watch the episode and imagine our Grace in the midst, as it were.


	2. Ghosts

**Chapter 2 – Ghosts**

**Since I have been asked (and can't reply in a PM): Hotch is in the Character list instead of Reid because it's more of a Hotch ficisode. Hope that clears things up :)**

**Essential Listening: Screenager, by Muse**

0o0

Prentiss glanced at the broken woman in the isolation ward beside them. Even through the glass she could see her laboured breathing, the blackened skin. It made her feel cold, even in the temperature controlled burn ward.

"Has she said anything about the fires?" Hotch asked; Prentiss turned her attention to the burns specialist in front of them.

Dr Macy shook her head.

"I'm giving her as much painkiller as I can," she said, plainly. "She asked about her husband and son," she continued, more softly, "she passed out again before I had to answer."

"So she doesn't know?" Emily asked, knowing that that would shut Mrs Cutler down – they would lose the chance to get any useful information from her the moment she realised that they were gone. They would have to handle this carefully.

Dr Macy shook her head again, and this time it had a lot more finality to it.

"Whatever you tell her," she said, quietly, "she won't live long enough to know different."

Emily felt her mouth fall open.

"I'll be right back," said Dr Macy, moving away to organise clean suits for them both.

"Did she just tell us to lie to a material witness?" Emily asked, shocked.

"No," said Hotch, gently, eyes resting on the unconscious woman behind the glass. "She told us that we could."

0o0o0o0

There were people leaving flowers against the trees that lined the street in front of the house as they pulled up. The ephemera of grief was accumulating like flotsam along the perimeter of the crime scene. The Cutlers had been a popular family.

Grace took a deep breath before she opened the car door, but it wasn't enough to limit the scent of charred wood that washed over her as she climbed out. She frowned to herself trying to keep her mind on the present.

She followed Morgan and Gideon as they strode across the street and ducked under the crime scene tape.

"Welcome," said a slim young man, jogging towards them. He was small, dark and direct in manner; this was a man who was obviously used to taking charge. "Ricardo Vega," he said, shaking hands with Gideon. "SFFD Arson Unit."

"Hi, Jason Gideon," said Gideon, as the man shook Morgan's hand. "This is Derek Morgan and Grace Pearce."

Grace shook his hand, too, watching the man take a quick assessment of their body language.

_A born investigator_, she mused.

"'_The most likely arson suspect is the first responder,_'" said Vega, briskly, moving with them towards the burnt out house. "'_Who set both fires with premeditated intent to return to it in a professional capacity'._"

Gideon smiled slightly.

"You've read my paper."

"_Profiles of a Serial Arsonist_," Vega nodded. "I make everyone on my team read it."

Grace ran her eyes over the blackened carcass of the Cutler house, willing her heart to stop dancing around in her chest so distractingly.

"I've run the first responders of both fires," Vega was saying. "These are the pedigrees of everyone that was here that night." He handed three large folders to Morgan, who quirked an eyebrow at him, impressed. "No fire, police to EMT responded to both."

"No one?" Morgan asked, surprised.

"Except me," said Vega, and Grace tore her eyes away from the house to gauge his expression. "Which is why I've included copies of my departmental reviews, medical records and psych' evaluations."

"That's unnecessary," said Gideon, waving them away.

"No, it's not," said Vega, briskly. "Your best suspect is a fireman who saw both fires burning – that's me." He looked up at them, something close to a challenge in his eyes. "I'm saving you time."

Grace managed a small smile as she looked away again. It was always good to know that the person in charge of an investigation was covering all the angles they could. Vega wanted this UnSub badly; not only had the fires wounded his professional pride, the manner of these people's deaths had pissed him off on a deep, personal level.

He would do everything he could to help the BAU to bring the sick bastard down.

"Come on," he said, leading them around the back of the property. "I'll walk you through it."

0o0o0o0

The smell of Charlotte Cutler's burnt skin hit Emily as she followed Hotch into the isolation room. It mingled unpleasantly with the antiseptic and made Emily think involuntarily of barbecued meat.

Feeling suddenly queasy, she stayed slightly behind Hotch, glad of the psychological barrier his presence provided.

"Mrs Cutler?" he asked, quietly, and the woman on the bed stirred, painfully. "I'm Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, this is Special Agent Emily Prentiss…"

"Paul?" the woman croaked, and Emily's heart broke for her.

"Your son," she began, uncertain how to break such awful news to a woman who was already in acute distress.

"Was with you on the night of the fire," Hotch finished for her. "That's why we're here."

Emily stared at the back of his head in surprise.

"I don't understand," said Mrs Cutler; Emily saw that her limbs were beginning to shake – probably from the sheer amount of pain her body was processing.

"We're FBI agents," said Hotch, and she understood. Mrs Cutler was barely with them at all – they needed to keep her focussed on their questions and not on her husband and son. "We think that the fire may have been set intentionally."

"I'm very tired," said Mrs Cutler, and Emily could well believe it. She looked like she might pass out again at any moment.

"I understand," said Hotch, gently. "This is very important. Do you think you could just give us a couple of minutes?"

Charlotte Cutler nodded painfully, and Emily was suddenly very glad that Hotch was there. None of her training had prepared her for talking to someone like this, someone so obviously losing the battle to stay alive. She felt helpless and heartless for intruding. She wouldn't have known where to start.

"I want you to think back to that night," said Hotch. "Was there anything out of the ordinary?"

Mrs Cutler stared up at him in painful confusion.

"Think about the things that you normally do," Emily suggested. "Uh… get undressed, wash your face…"

"I couldn't brush my teeth," said Mrs Cutler. "Dennis got the water back on. And then we…" she trailed off as the pain, and the fear, and the medication became too much.

"Then you went to bed?" Emily encouraged, gently.

The woman nodded, swallowing painfully.

"Do you remember what woke you up?" Hotch asked.

"Paul."

"Not the smoke alarms?" Emily asked, surprised.

Mrs Cutler began to cry helpless, exhausted tears.

"It was Paul."

"What else do you remember?" Hotch pressed.

"Dennis unlocked it – and it wouldn't open," Charlotte Cutler said, through her tears.

"He unlocked what?" Hotch asked.

"The front door," Mrs Cutler cried. "Somebody please help us, please!"

Emily realised that the poor woman was reliving the fire – a side effect of the painkillers, perhaps. Beside her, the bleating of the woman's heart monitor sped up. Emily wanted to reach out and comfort her, let her know that she wasn't alone – but she didn't, aware that it would only make things worse.

"Somebody please, help us!" Help us, _please_!" the woman moaned. "And then I saw the fireman," she continued, with something close to wonder in her eyes, "and I knew it was going to be okay…"

Desperately, she looked around the hospital room, gripped by a remembered fear.

"Dennis! Paul!" she croaked. "Where's my baby? Paul –" she stared imploringly at Hotch. "Where are they? Are they okay?"

"They're fine," Hotch assured her, and Emily closed her eyes, painfully aware of how many rules he had just broken. Mrs Cutler cried out in sheer relief. "They're just outside in the waiting room."

"Oh," she said, smiling at them through her tears.

She stared distractedly at them then, and for the first time Emily wondered whether a part of Mrs Cutler knew that she was dying.

"I don't want them to see me like this," she whispered, urgently. "No, I'm not ready. Could you, please, tell them to wait a minute? Please, I'm not ready."

"Agent Prentiss will tell them," said Hotch, nodding. "You call Gideon and Morgan."

Emily knew a dismissal when she heard one, and – frankly – she couldn't wait to get out of the room. She heard Mrs Cutler's laboured breathing as she made for the door, and Hotch's voice – unusually gentle – asking her if she wanted him to wait with her until she was ready.

Emily stripped off the clean-suit as quickly as she could and hurried out into the hospital proper, searching for a place where she could use her cell phone and longing for some air.

0o0o0o0

"She told her husband there was no water," said Gideon, as they surveyed the perimeter of the Cutler's property. Emily's call had interrupted their walk-through and Grace was glad of the extra moments it afforded to pull herself together. "Where's the shut off?"

"The main is at the sidewalk," said Vega, pointing it out.

"Okay, so I'm the UnSub," said Morgan, following his arm. "I need to get in the house – so I turn the water off right here, and then I wait."

Grace watched him crouch down by the stop-tap and look around. He pointed at the glossy-leaved shrubs behind where she, Gideon and Vega were standing.

"I wait for him to come outside," he continued, walking back towards them. "I wait for them to go to sleep. And then I carefully pour the fuel, cutting access to the back door. I leave them only one way to get out…"

Grace followed the agents up the steps to the house.

"Front door," said Morgan, pushing it open.

They picked their way inside, looking around at the remnants of three people's lives.

The stench of burning assaulted Grace's nostrils and mouth, and she clamped her lips tightly shut.

It was extraordinary how many different types of 'burnt' smell there were at the site of a house fire: burnt wood, scorched brick, smouldering fabric – that sour, acrid stench that melting plastic produced…

If you stood still long enough you could probably even pick out the scent of the accelerant, if any was left in the scalded air.

There was another smell, too, one that Grace was doing her best to ignore.

They hadn't been able to reach the Cutlers before the fire had done its worst.

Of all the indescribably unpleasant smells at a murder scene, burnt flesh was invariably the worst. Advanced decomposition might turn your stomach and stick to your hair and skin for days at a time, but it didn't make you salivate.

It was a dreadful sensation – beginning to feel hungry and then remembering precisely what it was that was reminding you of freshly cooked steak.

Grace swallowed with deliberate care, aware that her heart had started to race.

Gideon glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, the way he had been at Reid for the past few weeks – and she nodded, almost imperceptibly. She would be okay.

It was only her second bloody case with the BAU, after all; she had no intention of spending it hunched over in the bushes.

_After all_, she told herself sternly, _you've seen worse._

"She said Dennis unlocked it," said Gideon, scrutinising the door jamb. "It still wouldn't open."

"When we got here, it was unlocked," said Vega, gesturing at the charred wood. "Door opens in – nothing held it from the outside, so whatever he used to keep it shut was on the inside. Here –" he said, looking up at the inside of the door frame – "see those light spots?"

Grace followed his gaze.

"Bastard," she breathed. "As if setting the fire wasn't bad enough!"

She shut her mouth tightly once more, distinctly unhappy about how much burnt air she had inadvertently breathed in.

"Something was jammed in there," Vega continued, oblivious to Grace's internal battle of wills. "Shielded the surface beneath it from the smoke. Wedged in tight. Some kind of expanding tool."

"So where is it?" Morgan asked. "If he jammed it from the inside, it'd still be there."

"We didn't find anything," said Vega, shaking his head.

"He took it with him," said Gideon.

"Well, that means he would have still being inside as it was burning," said Morgan, surprised.

"He would have had to be in full fire gear," Vega speculated.

"Which isn't too easy to come across," said Grace, through gritted teeth.

"She didn't see a fireman," said Gideon, heavily.

"She saw the UnSub," Morgan finished.

Grace closed her eyes, trying not to breathe in too much.

_Sick son of a bitch_, she thought, venomously.

"Now, hold on," said Vega, not following. "The house is on fire. Why would he stay inside of it?"

"He wanted to watch them burn," said Gideon, and Grace saw Vega's face twist in horror.

Her head swam as she took another, unwelcome breath. She could almost hear them shouting out for help – the fear and desperation in their voices. Her stomach gave a definite lurch as another voice surfaced in her mind.

She staggered out into the air without looking back – though she heard Morgan call her name. The terrible stench followed her into the sunlight, clawing at her. Five years of crime scene training carried her under the tape, across the street and behind a van before she fell to her knees in the bushes and voided her breakfast.

She coughed and retched, steadying herself against the metal fence beside her. Her head swam unpleasantly, and she tried to force her father's terrified screams out of her mind.

"Hey, you okay?"

Morgan's hand landed gently on her shoulder and she swore, quietly, aware that there were errant tears running down her cheeks.

"Great start to a new job," she choked, and he chuckled.

"Fires are the worst."

"Yeah," she said, sitting back on her haunches and wishing that she could stop shaking.

Morgan's body language shifted subtly as he saw her face; he moved slightly, putting himself between her and any potential onlookers. She was more than a little grateful.

"You sure you're okay?" he asked, concerned, but trying not to overwhelm her.

Profilers. Honestly.

"My Dad died in a fire," she blurted out, and scrubbed at her face, angrily. Maybe he'd let it go. "About a year ago. It just – reminded me, that's all."

He looked away, and Grace took the opportunity to wipe any remaining tears away. Apparently, Morgan wasn't one to let things go.

"You were first on the scene?" he asked, gently, and then nodded. Her expression had told him everything he needed to know. "Man, that's rough."

Grace mentally steadied herself, reaching for the protective mask of in-expression that had got her through those terrible few weeks.

"I just can't imagine anyone watching someone burning to death and not trying to help them," she said, in a shaky voice.

Morgan gave her shoulders a brotherly squeeze and helped her to her feet as Gideon rounded the corner.

"I'm sorry, Gideon, I thought I could handle it –"

He waved her apology away and handed her a much needed bottle of water. Morgan, taking some minute clue from his boss, made himself scarce.

"It's alright," he said, as she rinsed her mouth out. "I shouldn't have brought you out here."

"Really," she protested, "I'm fine –"

"You're going back to the Fire Department," he interrupted, in a tone that brooked no argument. "One of Vega's people will drive you. Help Reid and JJ."

Grace nodded, deeply embarrassed; some of it must have shown on her face, as Gideon patted her once on the shoulder.

"You have nothing to be ashamed of," he assured her. "Your first fire scene after you saw what you saw…" he sighed. "I'm impressed you made it in the house."

Aware that his comment had been intended to make her feel better, she made herself chuckle. She let him pilot her to a waiting car, feeling very vulnerable indeed and immeasurably glad that Gideon hadn't insisted on sending her straight back to D.C.


	3. The Meaning of LUST

**Chapter 3 – The Meaning of LUST**

**Essential listening: The Hunger, by Coral Fang**

**0o0**

JJ perched on the edge of a sturdy San Francisco Fire Department desk, going through the initial paperwork with the smartly dressed woman beside her.

Detective Castro was like most of the officers JJ came across in the course of investigations: smart, competent and hardworking – and like most of the detectives the BAU liaised with, extremely pissed off.

She was frustrated by a case that to all outside observers looked impossible to solve: no witnesses, no clear connection between the victims, and no obvious motive other than the visitation of a particularly unpleasant death on families of fairly nice people.

Castro pulled a case file towards her with a sigh; half of JJ's job these days seemed to be convincing various members of America's law enforcement services that her team could be trusted to get the job done.

They didn't always make it easy for her.

"This place is great!" said Reid, hurrying towards them with two cups of coffee balanced precariously in one hand, the station's first aid kit in the other. "They have their own espresso machine!"

JJ gave him a rueful smile, glad to have him as close to normal as Reid ever got.

"Uh – Dr Reid, this is Detective Castro," she said, hoping he'd take the hint to be slightly more professional.

"Hi," he said, handing one of the coffees to JJ and waving the first aid box in greeting.

"She's with the SFPD liaison."

He managed a smile and tried – unsuccessfully – to open the box.

"I burned my hand on the espresso machine – ah…" he said, as the contents of the first aid box spilled out across the desk.

"Woah," said JJ, as he scrambled to clear up the mess.

"A genius, you said?" Castro asked, unconvinced.

"Yeah, uh…" said JJ, watching him trying to repack the first aid box. "His co-ordination drops off when he's thinking."

She gave a Reid a bright smile as he shot her an I'm-right-here kind of look.

"Good," said Detective Castro. "Because we need to figure out why this psycho chooses these families."

"He's most likely targeting the men," said Reid, pulling out a plaster, "they're the most similar members of the two families."

Fielding Detective Castro's dubious glance, JJ nodded towards Reid, who had abandoned the treatment of his burned hand to reassess the incident board. Detective Castro followed him, clearly unimpressed.

"Sue Jarvis, twenty-nine, worked full-time," he said, pointing her out. "Charlotte Cutler, thirty-nine, was a stay-at-home mom. The Jarvises had two girls in public grade school – the Cutlers had a son in private high school. The Jarvises went to church, the Cutlers didn't – nothing holds. Except with the men," he continued, waving at the family portraits tacked to the board. "Both in their late thirties, white, approximately six feet tall, brown hair. Nice homes, nice families, good jobs – that's the connection."

"What connection?" asked Detective Castro, who by this point could probably have given them the families' shoe sizes if they'd asked. "Cutler was a lawyer, Jarvis an executive. There's no evidence they ever met."

"But they're of the same type," Reid explained, patiently. "Uh – we know that most serial arsonists are white males – a complex MO develops over time. This guy's in his mid-thirties: he sees the victims as successful versions of himself, and he resents them for it."

He gave an awkward smile; Detective Castro was still staring dubiously back at him. JJ didn't blame her; at this stage, the profile was just too general to narrow things down enough for a frustrated detective with seven corpses on her books.

"I'll issue an APB for a resentful, six-foot, white guy," she said, barely containing the sarcasm. She stalked away, clutching her stack of files; Reid watched her go, full of that familiar confusion he felt when someone from outside the team didn't understand him.

JJ gave him an 'A-OK' sign and made to follow the detective. She paused as Agent Pearce walked in, looking pale and shaken.

"Are you okay?" she asked, abruptly changing direction.

Pearce gave an uncomfortable little half-shrug.

"More or less," she said, clearly hoping that that would be the end of it.

JJ, who had been the BAU's media liaison long enough to learn a thing or two, stood her ground, and after a few moments Agent Pearce sighed, rolling her eyes.

"I threw up at the crime scene," she admitted, in a small, irritable voice.

"Oh," said JJ, a little surprised. Given the level of gore associated with their last case she wouldn't have thought Pearce would have a problem with a crime scene with no bodies in it.

"My Dad died in a fire," she added, reluctantly, noticing JJ's expression. "It sort of brought it all back."

JJ couldn't think of anything to say to that. Agent Pearce was clearly annoyed at herself for losing control in front of two agents and about twenty fire investigators, and JJ could imagine how embarrassed she must be.

"Uh, how about you get started on the victimology with Reid," she suggested. "I have to work through the case files with Detective Castro."

Pearce gave her a grateful smile.

"Thanks," she said, quietly. "I feel like such a n00b."

"Don't worry about it," JJ assured her. "We all have something that gets to us."

Pearce nodded and moved to where Reid was hovering, around the incident board.

Thinking that their new agent looked a little unsteady on her feet, JJ went in search of the fabled espresso machine and convinced it to make something resembling hot, sweet tea.

She dropped her own coffee and the case files on the desk she was sharing with Detective Castro in Vega's office on her way past.

"Hey, look, I'm sorry," said Castro, looking up from her files. "It's just that this guy is…"

"It's okay," JJ told her, with a smile. "I get it – you just want to catch the guy."

Detective Castro smiled back, ruefully.

"I'll be right back," said JJ, waving Pearce's cup of tea as she departed. She stopped short of the incident room, however, standing just out of sight behind a glass display case.

Agent Pearce was sitting heavily on one of the desks, looking weary and defeated, her guard down completely. She was giving Reid a wan smile, who was fiddling absently with the plaster on his hand. Even from here, JJ could tell that they were speaking in hushed tones – probably about Pearce's sudden departure from the crime scene.

But – and this was why she had paused at the room's entrance – there was something odd in the way Reid was standing. He was – consciously or otherwise – blocking the view of several members of the SFFD, none of whom were paying attention; leaning slightly towards her, protectively. They were much closer than you would expect two new colleagues to be: almost (but not quite) touching.

Just on the edge of being intimate.

She thought back to the night she had glimpsed an altogether different side of Spencer Reid in an alley in New Orleans, when he was supposed to be in Galveston and Pearce had barely known any of them. Since then, they had behaved as nothing other than friends, as far as JJ had seen… but now…

Spencer was usually so easy to read.

She watched him drop his hand over Pearce's with a subtlety that she didn't know her friend possessed, looking for all the world like he was reaching for his coffee. The ghost of a smile flickered across Agent Pearce's features; an acknowledgment of comfort received. JJ frowned. Reid hated to be touched.

She thought of all the times Pearce and Reid had walked out of the office together in the evenings, or sat chatting together at lunch. And he _did_ bring her a drink every day. JJ had put it down to Reid's own peculiar way of making someone feel welcome, but now she had to wonder.

Still…

She stepped out from behind the display case and headed briskly towards them, wondering how they would react. Reid stepped away from Pearce as soon as he saw her, somehow making the movement seem entirely natural.

_Nothing to see here_, his body language seemed to suggest. _Just two co-workers talking through a profile._

"Here," said JJ, handing Pearce the tea. "I thought you could use it."

"Thanks," the agent said, gratefully. "Nothing like tea to pick you up. My old Governor said it builds character."

"Oh, yeah?" Reid asked; JJ glanced at him. There wasn't a trace of embarrassment in his features. Either she had read the situation wrong, or he had no idea that their unusual behaviour had been observed.

"Yes," said Pearce, contemplatively, equally oblivious to JJ's scrutiny. "But he said the same about ale, too. And rugby. And certain types of cheese. And –" here she frowned – "patrolling crime scenes at three AM in the freezing rain."

Reid chuckled and when back to staring at the incident board, as if it held a pattern that only he could see, apparently reassured that Pearce was alright.

JJ left them to it, deciding that whatever was going on between them was much less important right now, compared to the man roasting families alive.

0o0o0o0

They were ranged around Detective Vega's office, reading files, checking facts, tossing theories around.

"Okay, great – I got it. Thanks," said JJ, as Garcia wound up another fact-filled phone call. She glanced up as Hotch walked in, expression grim.

"Charlotte Cutler died," he announced, heavily.

"Sorry," said Gideon, with feeling. "Next time, I'll go."

"What have we got on the vehicle?" Hotch asked, briskly.

"Uh-" said JJ, checking her notes. "It was a 1999 gold Ford Taurus. 85% of that model / colour-combo were sold domestically as fleet vehicles – company cars, rental fleets."

"You checked rental agencies?" Hotch asked, reading the printout that JJ passed him.

"Yeah," she said. "No one kept one for the past three weeks, or rented during both fires… so, I was thinking: who keeps a rental care for three weeks?"

"And if it's not a rental?"

"It would have to be a company car," said JJ. "This guy, he had to have time to stalk his victims, and if his job involved driving…" she trailed off, allowing the assembled agents to fill in the blanks.

"There was a serial arsonist up in Seattle, early '90s, said Detective Vega, with a hint of excitement: they might finally be onto something.

"Paul Kenneth Keller," Hotch nodded.

"Yeah," said Vega. "He used to drive around all day selling advertising for his dad's agency – and picking out places to burn."

"Company car," said Hotch, nodding. "Good work, JJ."

"Let's do the profile," said Gideon.

0o0

The assembled ranks of the SFFD and PD had arranged themselves around the incident room and were watching the agents expectantly, pens poised for their pearls of wisdom.

Grace had chosen to sit well back, on an abandoned desk; the whole situation felt a lot like being interviewed for a job, or taking part in a school play for which she had already forgotten the lines.

Confidence was the key, according to the briefing that Agent Hotchner had given her when they'd got back from New Orleans and Grace had been sworn in properly. The important thing was for the officers to trust the profile – even when it changed with new information – or there was no real point in giving one.

_Sound like you know what you're doing_, said her father's voice, emerging from her subconscious from years before. _If people believe you're on the right track they'll follow along as far as it takes them. The trick is to fool them into believing._

Smiling slightly at the memory, Grace altered her posture; it was difficult to appear in control when slumped on a desk.

She could feel Reid's gaze on her as she did it, and realised that he'd been keeping an unobtrusive eye on her; she winked at him, making him smirk. It felt good to have found herself on such a supportive team.

"The UnSub we're looking for is a highly intelligent, underachieving thirty-five to forty-five year old male, with a severe narcissistic character disorder," Hotch announced, kicking things off.

"Nothing in his life works for long," Gideon continued, over the sounds of thirty people scribbling industriously. "If he was married, he's now divorced. And if employed, it won't last."

"Whatever jobs he has or has had," Grace expanded, "he won't be very good at – and he will be constantly puzzled as to why. He'd be the guy who sits there wondering why the universe is always picking on him, even though in reality he's had just as many opportunities as everyone else – he just lacks the character or drive to act on them."

"What he wants is admiration," said Morgan. "But he's got no respect for others. Not their feelings and most certainly not their safety."

"He feels entitled," Gideon added. "He's like a petulant adolescent: he both resents and he absolutely expects others to take care of him."

"And given that a male relative wouldn't tolerate this behaviour, he most likely lives with a female relative," said Hotch. "His mother, grandmother, aunt – whom he exploits."

"His arson kit is expensive: fire suit, oxygen mask," Morgan continued. "This suggests that he may be employed, but his personality will not allow him to work closely with others in an office setting."

"This, along with the information about his vehicle, leads us to believe that he's a travelling salesman of some sort, who works for a company big enough not to notice he's a sociopath," Hotch added.

"Okay," said Detective Vega, reviewing her notes. "This scumbag has issues, we all get it. But why fire?"

"He's – uh – like a drug addict," Reid explained. "Only fire's his drug, and each time an addict needs a fix, they need more of the drug to get off, so his crimes will most likely get much worse…"

There were a few raised eyebrows around the room at that, and Grace watched as her fellow agents focussed on Reid more closely, probably wondering just how much personal experience he was speaking from.

"It would be almost impossible for him to quit without help," Reid added, quietly, looking as though he suddenly felt very exposed in the centre of the room. His eyes flicked to Gideon, and then to Grace, who nodded slowly.

There was a long pause as the FBI portion of the room subjected their young friend to some well-meaning scrutiny.

Acutely aware of how awkward this seemed, Grace was compelled to fill the lengthening silence and get them back on track.

"So basically, he won't stop until we catch him," said Grace, jolting the team out of their thoughts. "He won't be able to."

"Thank you very much," said Hotch, abruptly, dismissing the officers.

As San Francisco's finest began the general milling around that Grace associated with the start of a shift, Reid caught her eye.

She patted him on the shoulder as she moved out of the room.

0o0o0o0

Deep in her tech cave, Penelope Garcia typed manically away at her keyboard, busily cross-referencing, correlating and number-crunching all the facts she could find relating to their victims.

She grinned at the screen, secure in the knowledge that somewhere in this morass of data a serial killer lurked, and that – bit by bit – she was closing in on the sick fuck.

"She shoots," she said, typing in her search terms. A website matching her criteria flashed up on the screen. "She _scores_! The crowd goes wild!"

Beaming, and enjoying the appreciative noises of the crowd in her head, she hit the dial button on her phone.

0o0

Back in the SFFD HQ the team had once again congregated in Ricardo Vega's office. It was surprisingly spacious.

Right now there wasn't much they could do until the canvassing turned up some new information – or there was another fire.

The room was dense with frustration, though everyone was still trying to manifest positivity – at least in front of everyone else.

"I just put the entire department on tach alert," Vega sighed, handing the duty rosta to one of his men. Reid passed the man at the door, almost falling over him in his rush.

"Listen, Garcia's on line one," he said, leaning against the door. Vega transferred the call through and put it on speaker; the team leaned in: this ought to be good.

"Brace yourselves," she said, her voice sounding tinny through the phone's speakers. "I'm gonna teach you the meaning of 'LUST'.

"Did she say 'lust'?" Gideon asked, looking up in surprise.

"Uh-huh," said Garcia, with some glee. "I cross-referenced every known fact on the victims, and I just found a website that links both Dennis Cutler's and Matthew Jarvis's companies on a list of, 'businesses guilty of 'LUST'."

"I'm missing something," said Hotch.

"Leaking Underground Storage Tanks."

"Oh, well, I'm glad it's not just the London Metropolitan Police who suffer from inappropriate acronyms," Grace remarked.

"The website belongs to a recently formed San Francisco chapter of the Earth Defence Front."

"The EDF?" exclaimed Prentiss, surprised. "The eco-terrorist group?"

"They aren't eco-terrorists," said Reid. "They're environmental activists."

"Dennis Cutler and Matthew Jarvis may disagree with you," said Morgan.

"I'm pretty sure some EDF people were sent up for torching an SUV dealership a while back in San Diego," said Vega.

Gideon shook his head.

"Nobody died in those fires."

"Maybe they got lucky," said Prentiss.

"No, it's not luck," said Gideon firmly. "This group's dedicated to protecting life."

Grace nodded, thinking of the various environmental groups back in the UK.

"What do they, wait until no one's home and then light the place up?" Vega scoffed in disbelief.

"That's exactly what they do," sad Hotch.

"Are you telling me that the FBI don't have files on organisations like this?" Vega asked, incredulous. "Lists of members?"

"Domestic groups like the EDF aren't the Bureau's top priority right now," said Morgan.

"Besides," added Reid, "they're more of a movement than an organisation."

"There's a central ideology, but the chapters are independent," Gideon explained. "They don't pay dues and they don't keep membership lists."

"What if one of the chapters has broken ranks and has a new belief?"

"Hurting people's never been a part of it," said Gideon, shaking his head. "It doesn't track. It doesn't fit the profile."

"Garcia, can you identify how many members are in this particular EDF chapter?" Hotch asked.

"Uh…" the sound of keys being hit emanated from the phone on the desk. "It looks like one hundred to a hundred-fifty."

Grace winced.

"That's a hell of a lot of people to suddenly become complicit in something like this," she said. "Much more likely we're looking for some lone nutter who's using the EDF cause as an excuse to feel righteous about his urge to kill."

Prentiss nodded.

"That's a lot of members to check," said Vega, unhappily.

"Rule out the women and any non-Caucasians," said Morgan. "What does that leave us?"

"Seventy-four," said Garcia, after a few moments of furious typing.

"Can you cross-check with employment records?" Grace asked.

"For you, anything, sugar," Garcia chirped. "But it's gonna take some time."

"That is something we do not have," sighed Prentiss.

"We've got to narrow this down somehow," said Hotch.

"I'm on it – Garcia out!" the phone went dead as one of Vega's firemen hurried in.

"There's been another one," he told them. "Two units responding."

The assembled agents swore.

"I don't like how fast this is happening," Grace said to Reid as the others hurried out to the scene. "I mean, three weeks is a hell of a short amount of time to go from getting your kicks burning things down in an irritating but non-violent way," she waved expansively at the stack of nuisance fire reports they'd isolated as probably the work of their UnSub. "And now he's up to what? Seven bodies? It's ludicrous."

"Ten," said Reid, sadly, tapping the call log on one of the screens. "Says here neighbours saw the occupier and his two kids go into the garage before it exploded."

Grace dropped into one of the mismatched departmental chairs that had accumulated during the briefing that morning, disgusted.

"It's worse when they're kids, somehow," she muttered.

"He's getting off on the kill now, rather than the fire," Reid observed darkly, reading through the alert. "The rest of the house was untouched."

Grace pinched the bridge of her nose: that was a phrase she had hoped she would never hear again.

"He's getting a taste for murder," she sighed.


	4. Evan Abby

**Chapter 4 – Evan Abby**

**Essential Listening: Do What You Want, by OkGo**

**0o0**

The fire had built up quickly, given the ready availability of fuel in the enclosed space of the garage. Witnesses said that there was only about a minute between the victims entering the structure and the fire getting hot enough to blow the garage door clean off, incinerating everything and everyone inside.

The Fire Department had had some trouble getting them out: the intense heat had fused parts of them to the car.

Hotch stalked through the wreckage, double-checking the facts with Garcia, back in Quantico.

Some days this was a job you could really come to hate.

"Thomas R Dunleivy, Dunbrook Development Group," he read aloud.

"On the list," said Garcia. "Okay, I'm sending you a file on the EDF leader: Evan Abby, forty-one, five foot eleven, one hundred and eighty-five pounds."

"Thanks, Garcia."

"Pardon me for asking, sir," she said. "But how do we even know he's involved?"

"We don't," Hotch explained. "That's why we're interviewing Abby at the crime scene. If he is the leader of the EDF, his reaction to all this should tell us exactly what we need to know."

He hung up, surveying the smoking ruins of the garage, Gideon by his side.

The lawn furniture and potted plants, still standing against all reason, put him in mind of his own backyard. For a moment, he could feel Mr Dunleivy's terror, trapped in an untenable situation, unable to save his kids as the sick bastard watched them burn.

"Where do you guys want it?" Vega asked, walking over from the coroner's van.

"This is the spot," said Hotch, glancing around. They had a good view of the house and garden from here – and so would Abby.

"When he arrives," said Gideon, "bring the fake bodies right past us, nice and slow. I want him to get a good look."

"Remind me to never play poker with you guys," said Vega, hurrying away to help his men stuff equipment into their spare body-bags.

"What do we have on this guy?" Gideon asked; there was a pause as Hotch stared down at the blackened chunk of shelving unit at his feet. "Hotch?" he asked again.

"What?" Hotch asked, his mind on Haley and his infant son.

"What do we have on the EDF leader?"

"Evan Abby, forty-one, divorced," Hotch listed, checking the file on his phone. "Father of Liam, fourteen. Environmental Engineer. Does consults on real estate projects. Has TIRKs with every company on the EDF list."

"I can't wait to meet him," said Gideon, watching Vega and his men wheeling laden gurneys out of sight – and not a moment too soon.

"Here he is," said Hotch, nodding towards the slim, serious looking man Agent Prentiss was escorting towards them.

"Mr Abby, these are special agents Jason Gideon and Aaron Hotchner," she said, as they came level.

"Mr Abby, thank you for coming," said Gideon, shaking the man's hand.

"Uh… Agent Prentiss said you needed my help with a LUST related fire?" he asked, looking around, bewildered.

Hotch nodded slightly; Prentiss had played her part well: Abby clearly had no clue why he was here.

"Yeah," said Gideon, heavily. "It's pretty bad." They watched as Abby's eyes followed the gurneys being wheeled nonchalantly past him. "Tom, Brad, Katie Dunleivy. All burned to death."

Abby stared after them, horrified.

"So," he said, forcing himself to look back at the agents, "where's the – uh – where's the leaking storage tank?"

"Katie was only twelve," said Hotch, trying to gauge his reaction. Abby's eyes dropped to the floor. "You've got a son about that age, don't you?"

The man's gaze snapped back up to Hotch's face, stunned.

"Do you know Tom Dunleivy?" Gideon asked; Abby stared at him, beginning to cotton on.

"What is this?" he asked slowly.

"He worked for Dunbrook Development Group," Gideon continued calmly.

"Why are you asking me these questions?" Abby asked; he seemed genuinely puzzled, but in their line of work you could never be too sure.

"You posted Dunbrook on your website," said Hotch.

"My website?" Abby was beginning to get flustered. "Look, I – I came down here voluntarily because I was told you needed help with a LUST related fire."

"Three fires," said Hotch, passing him some of the grislier crime scene photographs, one by one. "Three families." Abby visibly recoiled at the images, but Hotch went on handing them to him, needing to be certain. "Three fathers who worked for companies posted on your EDF website – all burned to death. You worked for these companies – every one on your list."

"Are you accusing me of a crime?"

"What do you think?" The expression on Abby's face shifted very rapidly from anger to horror as Gideon continued.

"Mr Abby, I support your cause. I reject these methods."

"Well, I don't know what cause or methods you're referring to," said Abby hotly.

"You created the site," said Hotch simply, "you posted the list. You're the leader of the EDF."

"Well, if you could prove that we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?" he spat, making to leave.

"Mr Abby, people are dying," said Gideon, stopping him in his tracks. "Children, Mr Abby. We know EDF strategy has always abhorred violence. I'm asking you, has EDF strategy changed?"

Evan Abby met Gideon's eyes dead on.

"No, it hasn't."

He turned and walked away from them, angry and disturbed.

"He could barely look at this," said Gideon, turning back to Hotch. "A serial arsonist wouldn't have been about to peel his eyes away."

"He's hiding something," said Hotch. "More than just his support for the EDF."

"Hey, it occurred to me," Prentiss began, "if all _I_ knew about the EDF was that they went around burning down SUV dealerships and housing developments…"

"Well, that's a common misconception," Gideon allowed.

"That's my point," said Prentiss. "What if our profile is right and the UnSub had the same misconception? He wants to fit in, he wants people around him to appreciate what he does… Isn't it possible that the UnSub joined the EDF thinking…"

"It was an arsonists' club?" Hotch finished.

"Sure," said Gideon, nodding. "It's possible."

"If – if we gave Abby our UnSub's profile," said Vega, "couldn't he help us identify him?"

"We can't give Abby the profile," Hotch explained. "Not until we find out what he's hiding."

"Still," said Prentiss. "It seems Abby's our best chance of finding the UnSub."

"You want Abby or the ex-wife?" Gideon asked, watching Hotch closely.

"Abby," Hotch decided, stalking off towards the SUVs without a backwards glance. He heard Prentiss's footsteps hurrying after him. Surveillance wasn't his idea of a good time, and something about Abby's manner was bothering him. He had clearly been horrified by the fires, but had held back… perhaps he was protecting their UnSub.

It was going to be a long day.

0o0o0o0

Gideon watched the woman sitting across from him carefully.

She was the usual amount of nervous for someone who hasn't done anything wrong and is being unexpectedly interviewed by the FBI.

She held herself steady and erect but spoke softly, as if self-confidence was something she had had to re-learn.

_Probably the result of the divorce_, Gideon mused.

She wanted to help them. The trick here would be keeping the questions gentle. No need to distress this family too much, at least not until they knew that Abby was a part of it.

Her son, Liam, was outside. Ostensibly he was being interviewed by Morgan, but mostly he was keeping the kid entertained. He kept glancing through the window, worried about his mother.

"At Berkeley twenty years ago, Evan was a different person," said Mrs Abby sadly. "In every way: warm, funny, honest – even naive."

"What happened?" Gideon asked.

"We had school loans," Mrs Abby explained, sadly. "I got pregnant. His job…" she looked down for a moment, a weary expression on her face.

"Evan was an environmental consultant," Gideon encouraged. "Builders hired him to help them clean up their sites – make sure they were up to EPA code."

"Evan thought they wanted him to do the right thing," said Mrs Abby bitterly.

"Did he?"

"Well," she said slowly. "Developers don't care about mercury in the ground water. They just wanna pass inspection as fast and cheap as possible." She sighed, aware that this was the real reason her marriage had broken down. "He had a budget. It was never enough, but they didn't care _how_ he spent it, as long as they passed inspection."

Gideon understood. A man with values could only betray them for so long before he lost himself. At least this explained Abby's involvement with the EDF.

"Well, how did Evan deal with that?" he asked her.

"He drank," she shrugged. "It got bad."

"How bad?"

"I thought he might hurt himself," said Mrs Abby, after a moment. "I didn't know if he could live with it."

Gideon nodded. That kind of rage could drive a man to do many things, but in this case it was unlikely to drive him to serial arson and murder. No. If Evan Abby was going to snap and murder someone it would be the people he dealt with directly at the companies, not random employees – and definitely not their families.

"How's his relationship with your son, Liam," he asked, nodding through the glass to the boy; Morgan was making him laugh now.

"He doesn't have one," said Mrs Abby, in a way that suggested that this was one thing she couldn't forgive. "I had to threaten to take him to court to get him to pay child support… It must have either scared the hell out of him or really pissed him off."

Gideon frowned.

"Why's that?"

"Because every Sunday night for the last nine months, he tosses two-thousand dollars cash through the mail slot." Gideon's frown deepened. That wasn't the action of a man filled with boiling rage. "He left us long before I threw him out."

It was the action of a man who felt he had nothing left to lose.

0o0o0o0

Prentiss watched Evan Abby climb out of his beaten up old car and tried not to eavesdrop on Hotch's phone-call. He seemed to be having one of those not-quite-arguments that couples had with Haley, and Emily didn't want to get involved.

"Honey, I don't know," he was saying. "I will – and I promise I'll make it up to you… Okay. I love you too."

He hung up with a sigh and Prentiss reflected that life as a singleton in the BAU was a good deal less complicated than she had first thought. Flying off at a moment's notice couldn't do any relationship much good in the long term.

_Haley must have the patience of a saint_, she thought.

"Everything okay?" she asked.

"Yeah."

Unconvinced, she let it go; the team practically lived together as it was, Hotch was entitled to some measure of privacy.

"You know," she said, changing the subject. "For a guy claiming to be innocent, he's acting pretty guilty."

"Never underestimate the effect of being confronted by the FBI will have on a suspect," said Hotch.

Prentiss bit down a smile: he was practically quoting from the BAU manual.

"I don't think he's affected," she said. "I think he's freaked out." She gestured out of the window at the building they were parked in front of. "In the time we've been watching him, he's packed his belongings into cardboard boxes, hit his attorney's office and _four_ banks."

"It does look like he's getting ready to run," Hotch agreed.

"The question is: what do we do?"

They watched as Abby got back in his crappy car and drove off.

"For now, nothing," said Hotch, starting up the engine. "We just watch."

0o0

It had been a long, tedious day of following Evan Abby around. Prentiss had cramp in places it shouldn't be feasible to _get _cramp, and they had very little to show for it.

They were sat outside his house now, in open defiance of the 'No Parking' sign Hotch had stopped in front of.

He had headed home after leaving the last bank and they had been waiting here ever since, wondering what he would do. Although she knew it wasn't, in some ways the whole thing seemed like a waste of valuable time. Aside from his string of seemingly suspicious errands earlier in the day, Abby had done nothing particularly interesting.

Except, it seemed, make rather a lot of phone calls.

People had been arriving in twos and threes for the last hour, gathering in what seemed to be Abby's dining room. They could make out their silhouettes through the curtains.

"All those people," Prentiss speculated. "No booze or music. That's either a very lame going away party or an EDF meeting."

"We need to set surveillance up," Hotch said, nodding towards the house. "Grab your camera."

"Where should I set up?"

"Right here," Hotch instructed. "He's hiding something. We don't have a warrant, we don't have surprise…"

_And we've spent way too long sitting in this damn' car_, Prentiss added mentally, suspecting that her boss was just as bored as she was.

"You want to intimidate him," she surmised.

"I want another chance to find out what he's hiding."

This could go one of two ways, Emily reflected as she turned the camera on and messed with the settings. Either way they'd get a reaction from Abby, and that was what they were counting on.

"Okay," she said, aiming her camera at the house. It didn't take long for the EDF members to emerge.

None of them looked particularly happy.

"Smile, everybody," Hotch muttered.

Emily managed to get some good head shots despite the low light – _God_ she loved the FBI's access to top of the range equipment – before Abby spotted them and stormed across his front lawn towards them.

"Oh, wow," said Emily, putting the camera down. "It looks like intimidation worked."

They got out of the SUV to meet him; if you're going to harass somebody, do it with confidence.

"So, what is it with you?" Abby asked, infuriated. "Shoving a bunch of dead kids in my face wasn't enough? Thought I needed a little harassment, too? It's over, alright? I denounced the fires and the people responsible for them, and I just disbanded the EDF," he nodded at the departing figures disappearing down the quiet suburban street.

"If the EDF had nothing to do with the fires then why would you disband?" Prentiss asked but he ignored her, instead directing his anger towards Hotch. She made an effort not to roll her eyes at the typical post-divorce, mid-life male behaviour. After all, they were making sure he had a really bad day, and nobody was perfect.

"Do you have kids, Agent Hotchner?"

"I have a son, like you."

"Good," said Abby. "Then I'm going to tell you this, one father to another: I started the EDF for my son, _and_ yours. Not to have some other guy's son burn to death."

He turned to Prentiss, clearly still angry.

"I hope your pictures come out," he said, before stalking back to his house, shaking his head.

"Prentiss, does he look like he weighs one eighty-five to you?" he asked, head to one side.

"One sixty-five, maybe."

Hotch frowned.

"Why would he hold a meeting when he knew we were watching?" she asked.

"He wanted us to see it," said Hotch, as they moved back towards the SUV. "He wanted to make sure that we saw him trying to do the right thing."

"You don't believe him?" Prentiss asked. Abby had seemed pretty earnest to her.

"I don't know," said Hotch, keeping his thoughts to himself.

Prentiss nodded.

"He seemed pretty angry for a guy who's trying to do the right thing," she allowed, getting into the car.

"That's why we need to get those photos to Garcia," said Hotch.

"What do you mean?"

"Either he's angry because he's guilty and we're onto him," said Hotch, and Emily nodded, following his line of thought. "Or he's angry because his attempts to do the right thing with the EDF have gotten people killed. But either way…"

"The arsonist was here tonight," she finished for him, pulling on her seatbelt.


	5. Paper Thin

**Chapter 5 – Paper Thin**

**Essential Listening: A God to Many Devils, by Kids in Glass Houses**

**0o0**

They'd got the call late the previous evening and Grace, for one, was glad that the SFFD had decided to let them sleep. There hadn't been a hell of a lot for anyone to do at the time, anyway.

Not that Grace had done much sleeping.

She'd spent most of the night doing exhaustive background searches into EDF members and trying to keep her father's final, tortured moments out of her mind. At about four AM, Reid had knocked on her hotel room door and forced her to turn the light out. Clearly, she hadn't been the only one working late.

_Gods_ but she hated the waiting.

The chase was fine – the chase was _great_ – exhilarating, satisfying. Even the initial phone call could set her heart racing, however guilty she might feel about that when the bodies started rolling in. But the waiting…

It left too much time for introspection – and right now, that was something she could more than do without.

"Detective Castro is with Vega – they're meeting Gideon and Morgan at the scene," said JJ, dropping fresh cups of hot beverage in front of her colleagues. "Hotch and Emily are still chasing Abby."

"That sounds like fun," Grace mumbled, greedily closing her hand around her tea. In light of her performance at the crime scene the morning before, she had skipped breakfast and was really beginning to regret it.

"How many victims?" Reid asked, still focussed on the incident board.

"Just the one," said JJ, sipping her coffee. "Thank God."

"That's not like him," Grace remarked.

"He broke pattern," said Reid, frowning at them. "Why now? What changed?"

"I'm guessing he didn't much like what Evan Abby had to say about him at the EDF meeting last night," Grace suggested.

Hotch and Prentiss had filled them in on his movements during a very late team dinner the previous evening.

_Probably at about the same time some poor bugger was burning to death_, Grace thought. Suddenly, she didn't feel so hungry any more.

"So Hotch was right – he was there last night…" JJ pulled out the files that Garcia had sent over the night before. Each one contained a photograph snapped by Prentiss at the EDF meeting and a brief résumé. They spread them across the desks they had commandeered in the incident room.

"There were thirty-seven people there last night," said Reid, staring at the files.

"And I guess we can rule out the women," said JJ, picking out a few of the files and dropping them in a separate pile. "That leaves…"

"Twenty-four," Reid immediately supplied. "Seventeen, if we take age into account."

He removed six more of the files.

"Okay," said Grace, flipping through her notes from the night before. "I have twelve men with isolated jobs – nine of them with company cars."

"You read through all one hundred and fifty files?" JJ asked, surprised.

"I couldn't sleep."

JJ looked like she wanted to ask if Grace was alright, but Reid cut across her abruptly.

"You want to take three each?" he asked.

"Sure," said JJ, giving Reid an odd look.

"I guess I wasn't the only one not sleeping," said Grace in an undertone, in an effort to diffuse some of the tension.

JJ nodded, settling down with her files.

Grace was aware, as she worked, that both her colleagues were watching her rather more closely than she would have liked. Although she appreciated that people were worrying about her – especially after such a short time with the team – such scrutiny irked her.

It was making the back of her neck itch.

JJ was also keeping an eye on Reid, she noted, in an unconscious sort of way. He'd interruption had been his way of protecting her, she knew, and that moment aside he had given the team little cause for concern lately. He still had moments, however, when the toll of the events in Georgia were written all over his face. She rather hoped that JJ would chalk it up to that rather than anything else.

She and Reid had spent a few sleepless hours talking about parents and the nature of helplessness the night before. She glanced at the young doctor. The more she found out about her new friend, the more she wondered how he was still standing, weighed down as he was by his own, particular burdens.

It had been hard enough for Grace when her father had been diagnosed… It had been like finding a new kind of hell every day as the man who had raised her gradually lost pieces of himself, becoming more and more like a baffled, well-meaning stranger. She couldn't imagine dealing with that sort of stress as a child – even an obscenely intelligent one… And having to have her committed, on his birthday no less…

Living with that kind of condition had its cost.

It had been clear from the way that he had spoken about his mother that he loved her dearly, and Grace was glad that he still had her there to steady him – though she was certain he'd rather die than let her know what had happened to him. He didn't want her to worry.

Ignoring the part of her that ached to hear her father's voice again, worried or not, she took a breath and applied herself to the file in front of her.

They had a serial arsonist to catch.

0o0o0o0

Chief Vega's team had cordoned off the junction of the street and were busily processing the miniscule evidence that such a random and unprovoked attack had generated.

Morgan sighed as he and Gideon walked up to the blackened area of grass and sidewalk where last night's victim had hit the ground.

This son of a bitch was really beginning to piss him off.

"The victim was a CPA," Detective Castro told them, looking up from her notes. "Greg Belew, thirty-nine, white, six foot, handsome." She paused as the two agents took in the twisted crumbs of plastic and leather that were all that was left of Mr Belew's belongings. "He was talking to his fiancée on his cell when it happened."

Morgan shook his head. You didn't forget hearing something like that.

"It was kerosene," Vega added. "Same exact type used in the other fires."

"Well," said Morgan, "Hotch had Abby under surveillance at the time of the attack, so we know Abby's not the UnSub."

"Witnesses put a gold sedan here," said Vega. "So we know this is our guy."

"And, given that the attack occurred less than thirty minutes after the EDF meeting and Abby's house is less than a mile from here…" Morgan continued, thinking aloud.

"Chances are the UnSub was at Abby's house," Gideon finished.

"He parked some distance away and walked," Vega surmised.

"This victim isn't even on the EDF list," said Morgan. He glared at the blackened patch of grass at his feet. It was just so damn' pointless.

"No," Castro agreed sadly. "He was just a guy who looked like he had a nice life, like the others."

"The UnSub didn't go into a house," said Vega, looking around. "He barely even got out of his car – there was no planning whatsoever." He paused. "Why?"

"He's devolving," Morgan explained. "He's doing it fast."

"It's more than that," Gideon proposed. "This was random. Impulsive. Adolescent. Like a tantrum – he's got displaced aggression: he listens to Abby denounce him and his work, it enrages him."

_Coward_, Morgan thought bitterly. _Can't face the man he's really angry with, gotta take it out on this poor bastard…_

"So that's the trigger," Gideon continued. "The UnSub lashes out immediately."

"Well, if he was at Abby's, we have him on camera," Morgan said. "It's just a matter of time before Garcia can start narrowing down the suspect list."

"He's devolving too rapidly," said Gideon, with a slight shake of his head. "He's gonna attack again, soon…" He shrugged, "We're gonna have to trust this Abby guy with the profile. Let's go."

0o0

Prentiss watched Hotch walk briskly back from the doctor's office with an oddly bitter expression on his face. They had been tailing Abby all morning and – though his sketchy behaviour hadn't altered – he didn't appear to be trying to make a break for it.

She wondered what could have made Hotch's face seem so pinched.

"He's leaving," he said as he got into the car, "but not in the way we thought."

"What do you mean?"

"He's seeing his oncologist."

"Oh God," said Emily, with feeling. Suddenly Evan Abby made a hell of a lot more sense. Of course he was angry, of course he was bitter… he was literally running out of time.

Silently, they watched him cross the road and get back into his car. He looked so slight and vulnerable all of a sudden.

"It makes sense," she said. "The banks, the attorney… he's putting his life in order."

"Yeah," Hotch agreed, starting up the engine.

Emily watched Abby as he drove off along the street.

He wasn't even twice her age.

It just didn't seem fair.

0o0

They'd parked in a leafy side-street across from a ball-park. Abby had been watching the game for a good twenty minutes when Hotch decided to make his move. He'd needed to get his thoughts in order before he could.

He'd left Prentiss in the car, ostensibly so she could fill Gideon and the rest of the team in on their discovery, but mostly because he wanted to do this alone. He crossed the road, clutching the pictures from the EDF meeting under one arm. Evan Abby was a principled man for whom time was very rapidly running out: he would want to do the right thing. He would help them if he could.

"Which one is your son?" Aaron asked, as he joined Abby at the fence.

He jumped, absorbed in the game.

For a moment he looked like he wasn't going to answer, but he blew out his cheeks and pointed the boy out, leaning back on the fence.

"Catcher."

"Does he know you're here?" Aaron asked.

"I think so," Abby said, as both men watched him practice, "but we have an arrangement."

"What's that?" Hotch asked, glad to be getting somewhere.

"We both pretend I'm not."

"Sorry," said Aaron, and meant it. He watched Liam Abby for a moment, hoping that this wasn't a glimpse of his own future. He gave Abby a sideways look. "How long do you have?"

Abby stared at him, stunned, before chuckling at the efficiency of the FBI.

"Six months," he said, and glanced up at the blue sky above them before adding, "a year would be a miracle."

"And you haven't told anyone?"

"No…" Abby looked down. "It's leukaemia… LUST can be lethal," he added, with another dry chuckle. "I started the EDF right after I was diagnosed…" he looked at Hotch. "How did you know?"

Aaron paused a moment; as uncomfortable as he was discussing his own private life, he needed to build on the odd rapport he and Abby seemed to share. He needed him to trust him. Besides, this man was in a lot of pain, and worried for his son. It might help him to know that someone else's son had turned out okay.

"My father, when I was in high school… everyone knew he had affairs," he said. "Even my mother – but nobody talked about it, so I decided to confront him. And I followed him." He shifted, uncomfortable. "The lawyers, the doctors, the banks, the weight loss, it… it all came back. He had lung cancer."

Abby nodded sombrely.

"You know what benzene is?" he asked.

"I know it causes cancer," Aaron admitted.

"Leukaemia," said Abby wryly, walking slowly away from the fence. It was as if he wanted to keep this topic as separate as he could from his son. "It's also highly flammable," he continued. "They keep it in underground storage tanks – it's expensive to clean up, cheaper to hide." He raised his hands, an admission of heart-felt guilt. "My speciality…

"Most of the properties were zoned 'CR' – Commercial Restricted – warehouses where nobody worked, so what's the harm, right?" He coughed, and again Aaron caught that oddly haunted look in Abby's eyes that he'd seen the day before. "Well, I just found out that one of those jobs was sold and rezoned 'ES'. Elementary School."

"And you didn't report it?" Aaron asked, surprised.

"I report it, they come after me," said Abby, coming to a halt. "And I leave nothing for my son." He glanced behind him to where Liam's team were still practicing. "That's why I started the EDF, the LUST list…" he shook his head, frustration and irony written all over him. "I was trying to do the right thing."

"You still can," Aaron told him.

Abby shook his head, annoyed.

"I don't know who he is."

"He was at your house last night – and he was angry," Hotch said, handing him the surveillance images.

"Yeah, everybody was angry last night," said Abby, flicking through the photographs. "They were furious that I shut it all down."

"He was angry for a different reason," Aaron explained, trying to jog Abby's memory. "What you said enraged him, but he's a coward. He wouldn't confront you."

Abby peered hard at the pictures in his hands; he had thought he knew these people, that no one he knew would be capable of the barbarism Hotch had shown him the day before. Now he searched their faces, wondering.

"He was probably the only one who wasn't angry at the time," said Aaron. "He didn't express anything until after he left."

Abby stopped, stricken, looking at the bottom-most picture.

"Vincent Stiles," he said, in obvious distress. He handed the pictures back; Aaron could see the anger and disgust in his face.

And something else: guilt.

"Thank you," he said as Abby walked away, feeling for the man. It must have seemed like every bit of good he tried to do – from his job as an environmental consultant to starting up the local chapter of the EDF – had backfired magnificently.

He took up his phone and called the team, not taking his eyes off Abby's retreating back. It could so easily have been him…

"Vincent Stiles," he said, when Garcia patched him through. "Abby's leaving. Keep a tail on him until we have Stiles, just to be sure."

He heard Detective Castro's voice crackled over the SFFD radio: "Copy that – I have Abby."

He hung up and looked back at Abby pull out of the car park, thinking about Jack.

0o0

Reid was pacing. Grace wished he would stop; it was making her head hurt. They'd been waiting to hear that Stiles was in custody, and Grace was getting increasingly grumpy. All she seemed to have done for the last couple of days was wait. It was beginning to get to her.

"That was Emily," said JJ, hanging up the phone. "Stiles is already gone."

Reid dropped his pen on the table in frustration; Grace pinched the bridge of her nose.

"It looks like Abby tipped him off," JJ added, and watched as frustration shifted to astonishment on her colleagues' faces.

"What the hell is he playing at?" Grace demanded of the world at large.

JJ shrugged, equally nonplussed.

"We profiled Abby as horrified at the fires – why would he want to help Stiles?" Reid asked, shocked. "Give me his file!"

0o0o0o0

It wasn't his idea of a great meeting place, but it was isolated, and just at the moment that was exactly what he needed.

He watched Evan Abby pull up, intrigued. For all that the hippy moron had said about him – and his work – at the meeting the other night, he had still been generous enough to warn him that the Fed's were onto him.

He was puzzled as to why he wanted to meet, however… but perhaps he could turn Abby's generosity into an advantage.

"Bet you were afraid I wasn't comin', huh?" he said, as Abby 's gaunt frame stalked towards him.

"Look, those things that I said about you," Abby began.

"Uh huh?"

"I'm sorry, I had to say them."

Stiles folded his arms, not entirely buying it. He wasn't a coward. He was twice the man Evan Abby was.

"I know you're an artist," said Abby, stepping closer, "a genius. _I_ appreciate your true value."

Stiles preened a little, despite himself. Abby seemed in earnest; there was a dark clarity in his face that Stiles hadn't seen before.

"So what, you just came here to apologise?" he asked, intrigued.

"No," said Abby, and there was a manic glint to his eyes now, one that Stiles thought he recognised – and thought he could use. "I came here because I respect your talent, and I wanna take full advantage of it."

Stiles smiled.

It might be entertaining to string Abby along for a while… just long enough to get him alone in an enclosed space – somewhere he wouldn't be expecting a threat.

After all, he didn't need Abby's help.

He was a God.


	6. Zoning Change

**Chapter 6 – Zoning Change**

**Essential Listening: Battle of One, by 30 Seconds to Mars**

**0o0**

Aaron Hotchner swore, dropping his cell phone on Chief Vega's desk.

Gideon watched him through the open doorway, sorry for him.

"Garcia checked Abby's phone records," said Hotch angrily. "He called Stiles right after I left him."

Gideon nodded, understanding his friend's disappointment, frustration. It was something they all faced, whenever a case got too much for them. But this wasn't over yet; he needed Hotch thinking clearly, not beating himself up over this.

"Well, you saw something in Abby that you identified with," he said.

He watched Aaron's face as he tracked it down in his own mind, the thing that had made him trust Abby.

"I catch killers," he said bitterly, "I save lives – I'm a hero until my key hits my front door and then I'm just the father and husband who's never there."

Jason nodded, thinking of Stephen; his own failed marriage.

"Yeah, I got that one," he said, as if they were comparing scrapbooks.

"Here's the thing," said Hotch quietly. "When I'm home, I'm in this silent panic, because I know I that I have to be as good as I can, as fast as I can, because any minute the phone is gonna ring and my time is up, and that panic is _exactly_ what I saw in Abby."

"Good," Gideon prompted. "You're Abby: you're a dead man walking. You gotta make this right, you have no time left – how do you do it? Come on, don't think about it, you know the answer. What is it?"

"I'd stop him," said Aaron.

"How?"

"I'd burn him… the same way he killed them," he said slowly, thinking it through. "And I'd do it where nobody could get hurt –" he paused, realising how Abby could be tracked. "Which is why I would call it in first!"

He hurried past Jason into the incident room; it was a hive of activity this evening. Everybody was either on the phone or scanning through reports.

Chief Vega span around, handing Hotch a dispatch note.

"We got a nine-one-one anonymous tip for a fire in the Harbour District," he announced; the tone of the activity in the room shifted up a notch, gaining urgency. Agent Pearce and JJ stuck their heads out from what Gideon thought might be a cupboard. They seemed to have been having a heart to heart.

He nodded at JJ, glad to know that his team were looking out for one another.

"Is it a warehouse?" Hotch asked, Gideon a few steps behind him."

"Yeah," Vega confirmed, "six-thousand San Alameida."

"Can you call Garcia?" Hotch asked Morgan.

"Yeah, she's right here," said the younger agent, holding up his phone.

"Hey, Garcia," said Hotch, briskly, "can you check the zoning code on a warehouse at six-thousand San Alameida?"

"Yeah, I certainly can," came the disembodied reply.

"The SFPD chopper circled the harbour twice," said Prentiss, hurrying over. "There's no sign of fire."

"Okay, six-thousand San Alameida is a commercial storage facility," Garcia told them, from inside Morgan's phone. "But it looks like the property was just sold, _and_ the lot was approved for a zone conversion –"

"'CR' to 'ES'," Hotch guessed.

"Yeah, that's right," Garcia confirmed.

"'CR' – Commercial Restricted," said Detective Castro, "what's 'ES'?"

"Elementary School," Hotch called over his shoulder, already leaving. "And there's a leaking benzene tank underneath it. It's not a false alarm."

"There's no fire there!" Detective Castro protested.

"There's about to be," said Prentiss, realising what Abby was up to.

0o0

Stiles turned as he heard Abby clunking down the ramp and into the warehouse proper. The man was splashing kerosene around like an amateur, no style. No style at all.

"I started without you," said Abby.

Stiles eyed the man with distaste; he was getting it all over his _clothes_. Not that it would matter soon.

Abby wouldn't be leaving here alive.

"This is how you do it, right?" he asked.

Stiles shrugged.

"Yeah, well, a fire's a fire," he said, looking around. There wasn't much that would burn in here, it would take some kindling. "But once it gets going, it don't matter."

Abby paused, dropping the fuel can to the floor.

"That's not… that's not really true, though, is it?" he said, and Stiles grinned automatically, humouring the man. There was something off about Abby's bearing. He couldn't place it.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"There's something missing from this scenario, don't you think?" Abby asked, glancing around.

Stiles followed his gaze, wondering where the other man was going with this.

"I'm sorry," he laughed. "You lost me."

"The innocent family," said Abby. "You know – the victims. That's what the suit's for, right? So you can see the terror on their faces as they burn?"

Stiles narrowed his eyes. He hadn't credited Abby with that much intelligence.

"But of course, then you're here to kill me, right?"

"Yeah." They both laughed. "You're dead right."

Stiles took out his gun and aimed it at Abby in confirmation. Not much point in hiding it now.

Still, Abby's behaviour as a little off. Even with a gun in his face he didn't seem all that scared.

It was a little disappointing.

0o0

They were speeding through the Harbour District, lights flashing, sirens blazing – but Gideon well knew that chances were they wouldn't make it.

"We can't put a benzene fire out with water," said Vega, from the driver's seat. Gideon looked at him. "All water does is spread it around. It burns too hot. Contaminates the ground table."

"So you let it burn," said Gideon. If it caught before they reached him they wouldn't be able to help Abby, even if they could stop the spread of the fire. Once it got started, that was it.

"We exhaust the fuel," Vega nodded. "All we can do is cordon it off, stop it from spreading and let the benzene burn out – do you understand?"

"Yeah, I got it," said Gideon grimly, already dialling.

"Does Agent Hotchner?"

"Don't put me on speaker," he said when Morgan answered. "Just listen."

0o0

"Well _yeah_, you can go ahead and shoot me," said Abby, as though they were merely discussing barbecue recipes. "And then you set this place off like a bomb."

_Ah_, thought Stiles, and lowered his gun.

"No?" Abby asked, and Stiles glared at him. It didn't matter anyway. Once the fire was under way – assuming he couldn't lock Abby in somehow (it wouldn't take much to overpower him, he was a five stone weakling) – he could simply take the smug prick outside and shoot him in the car park. Not as neat, perhaps, but you couldn't have everything.

"Wh-" Stiles exclaimed as Abby pulled a lighter out of his pocket.

What the fuck did the self-righteous bastard think was going on?

"You know, this suit can handle over 1500 degrees," he explained, watching Abby turn the silvery thing over in his hands. "Benzene burns so fast, I won't go through half my air before it goes out."

Abby smiled and Stiles got a tiny bit worried.

"Oh, you won't even go through that much," said Abby. "See, benzene burns at twice that."

Stiles laughed.

Abby wasn't about to set it off while he was still inside, after all. He'd have time to get out – and then he'd deal with Abby.

"What are you doing?"

Abby smiled again.

"The right thing," he said, and it was almost a joke.

"Why?" Stiles asked, genuinely bewildered. "You didn't know any of those people!"

"Neither did you!" Abby snapped. For the first time since the EDF meeting he looked _really_ angry.

"This fire will spread," Stiles said incredulously.

"Fire Department's on its way," Abby shrugged.

He just didn't get it, did he?

"They can't fight a benzene fire," he told him.

"They'll contain it."

"Seriously, what…" Stiles asked, astonished at the other man's audacity. "How do you plan on getting out of here?"

Abby smirked and flicked the lighter open; Stiles stared at it, mesmerised.

"I don't."

Stiles felt his eyes widen, gripped by a terrible realisation. He made to reach for the lighter – knock it out of Abby's hands – but it was too late; Abby clicked the lighter, staring calmly back at him.

0o0

The explosion rattled the windows of the SUV even as the announcement came over the radio.

"_All appliances, confirmed report of major ignition, six-thousand San Alameida_."

Gideon watched as Morgan's SUV screeched to a halt; Vega followed suit as Hotch leapt from the car ahead of them.

Gideon and Morgan followed suit, putting themselves in their friend's path.

"Hotch – stop!" Morgan shouted, bodily slowing him down; Gideon grabbed his other shoulder. "_Stop! Stop!_"

"What, he's burning to death –" Hotch snapped, voice quickly rising.

"Look, I told you man –" Morgan cried as Hotch tried to force his way past him.

"-and we're just going to stand here?"

"Look at it man," said Morgan. "It's over."

Hotch sagged in defeat as another explosion ripped through the Harbour District, making them all jump.

They looked at him, hoping he'd calmed down enough not to make another attempt at passing them.

"He wanted his death to mean something," Hotch said helplessly, and Gideon was surprised to see tears in his usually stoic friend's eyes.

He walked away as the fire down the street began to spread; they could feel the heat from where they were standing, three blocks away.

Gideon watched him go.

"It did," he said, softly. "This way, it did."

0o0

Grace watched through the archway as Chief Vega handed Agent Hotchner the envelope from Evan Abby's car.

His last goodbye.

She well remembered the hopelessness she had felt, sitting on the stairs of her childhood home, watching but not seeing uniformed people swarming over the garden and street…

Hotch's face never betrayed much, but she suspected that he felt much the same now.

She glanced around

Most of them had gone back to the hotel. There wasn't a great deal left to do, and while the Fire Department did their jobs they were mostly just in the way. Grace had stayed to help JJ collect the files they'd need for their reports, but she and Detective Castro were now closeted in Vega's office, going over liaison paperwork.

The team depended so heavily on Gideon and Hotch, and she wondered who it was they went to on their worst days. You could only spend so long in the dark before it started to eat at you.

With this mind she poured out a cup of tea, putting in a dangerous amount of sugar. She dropped it on the desk in front of Hotch, who was still staring at the envelope in his hands, and sat next to him, leaning on the desk.

He shifted his gaze over, not giving anything away. She knew he'd read her file – he'd be no stranger to the circumstances of her father's death.

"You want to talk about it?" she asked, anticipating his answer.

"No, not really," he said, and she nodded, idly watching the members of the San Francisco Fire Department go about their mysterious errands.

She heard him sigh and pick up the tea, but she didn't press him further. Talking about things wasn't really her way, either.


	7. The Trust Game

**Chapter 7 – The Trust Game**

**Essential Listening: Breathe, by Alexi Murdoch**

**0o0**

They'd got back to Quantico at midday, having finished the night before too late to fly back. Garcia had greeted them like an anxious parent, fussing unnecessarily and making most of them laugh.

They'd managed to shake her as the afternoon rumbled on, and they had all piled into their reports. It was astonishing, really, how much paperwork one case could generate. Grace glared at her in-tray. She honestly hadn't thought the FBI would surpass the form-filling capabilities of the London Metropolitan Police, but they had, even in the few weeks Grace had been on the team.

They had been away for four days and already there were ten more reports than she remembered. She ran her finger down their buff cardboard departmental spines.

Perhaps they were breeding.

She pulled the next one (an evaluation report from somewhere in Michigan) off the stack with an air of resignation; someone would definitely notice if they mysteriously disappeared.

She glanced at the top crime-scene photograph and grimaced.

At her desk, Prentiss slapped her case file closed with an air of finality and checked her watch.

"That's it, guys," she said, pushing her chair back. "I'm outta here."

"Somewhere to be, Prentiss?" Morgan asked, leaning back in his chair.

"Yeah," she said, grabbing her bag. "Home – food, bath, bed."

Grace laughed.

"Sounds like heaven," she said, closing her own file. "Better get out of here before we get another call."

"Hell yeah," said Prentiss, swinging past Morgan. "See you tomorrow."

Deciding that whatever was terrorising Michigan could wait until the morning, Grace put her desk in order, not particularly looking forward to the microwaved meal and lumpy mattress that awaited her in the Cadet house. Standing up, she felt Morgan's eyes on her. He was watching her over the top of the weird glass partition that divided their desks.

"What?" she asked, sticking the evaluation report back on the top of her in-tray.

"You want to grab a drink?" he asked. Grace wondered whether this was his way of being supportive, remembering her reaction at the Cutler house.

She put her head to one side, considering. These past few years had shaped her into quite a private person. She didn't relish the thought of her new team-mates seeing her vulnerable – and talking about her father would always make her feel vulnerable. Reid, somehow, didn't count, particularly given the state of breakdown he had been in when they had met. He'd let her see his darker moments and she'd do the same, one day. That was different. But with the others…

Trust was earned, she reflected, and she'd have to start somewhere – and it wasn't like she had to tell him _everything_.

"Alright," she decided, "your shout."

Morgan quirked an eyebrow.

"You're buying," she translated; she was growing accustomed to having to explain the British parts of her idiolect.

"You're on," said Morgan, grabbing his jacket. "Pretty boy?"

"Uh – actually I'm going to finish this up," he said, glancing at Grace, who knew that he had a meeting tonight. "Thanks."

"Your loss," said Morgan jovially, waiting as Grace hooked an arm through her bag and knocked back the last of her tea.

"See you later," said Grace, ruffling Reid's hair as she passed him.

He tried to glare at her. It wasn't very convincing.

"Yeah, later…"

"So, where are we heading?" Grace asked. She hadn't been out too many times since she'd arrived – except for that one, ill-advised drinking session in New Orleans – and didn't really know the area.

"You'll see."

0o0

Grace eyed the perky barmaid who was chatting to Morgan with some amusement. The bar – which seemed to exist somewhere between a dedicated FBI hang-out and a sports bar – wasn't bad. It was hidden off a side street between the back end of the Marine Base Football Stadium and some warehouses of mysterious origin. It seemed to be the kind of place that you only found if someone in the know introduced you – and she suspected that this was what Morgan was up to. He wanted to build a rapport.

Standard interrogation technique.

It was probably also why he had chosen a secluded booth in the back of the bar.

She settled back in her seat as Morgan came back with their drinks, still grinning.

"She's cute," Grace observed.

"Not my type," said Morgan, setting their drinks down.

"Could have fooled me," Grace teased.

He gave a bark of laughter and she smiled, glad he wasn't offended.

"Nah – I got two rules," he told her cheerfully. "Never date anyone who carries a gun –" Grace snorted into her drink "- and never date someone who works where you like to eat."

"Sound advice," Grace nodded, and almost added that it was advice she ought to follow more often, but stopped herself; it might have led to questions she didn't want to answer.

Morgan watched her quietly for a few moments.

_Ah_, thought Grace, _the putting-me-at-my-ease part of the evening has come to an end…_

"So why the BAU?" Morgan asked, not quite ready to stop playing the trust game.

"The reputation didn't hurt," she said surprised. "And I had profiling experience. Not as much as you lot, as far as I can tell, but enough."

"Why not a profiling unit in Britain?" Morgan asked, sipping his beer.

Grace smiled. As with the coppers back home, conversations with her new colleagues (being that unique combination of curious and utterly suspicious that members of law enforcement tended towards) were rather like verbal chess matches.

"There aren't any," Grace said. "Not like the BAU, anyway. There are a few trained bods like me, scattered across various departments – and we run training seminars every few months – but there's no dedicated team. I think we're a bit too small, really."

"Your unit?"

"Britain in general," she said; Morgan laughed.

"Still – you could have transferred to another unit in the UK," he pressed, watching her expression closely. "You didn't have to come all the way out here."

Grace sighed and took a considered sip of her beer.

"I needed a change of scene," she said, leaving it deliberately vague. If he wanted to press her further, he could.

"I don't let go of things," said Morgan, after a moment.

Grace smiled slightly.

"You wouldn't be BAU if you did," she said. She put her beer carefully down on the table and took a deep breath. "Okay. About a year and a half ago, my Dad was diagnosed with severe early on-set dementia."

Morgan let out a long, slow whistle; Grace avoided his face – she didn't want to see the pity there.

"It was rough. I was working in London, driving up to his house in Oxford a couple of times a week after work, kipping in his spare room at the weekend. Most of it was a bit of a blur, to be honest." She frowned, absently drawing pictures in the condensation on the outside of her glass with her finger. "Doctor's visits, evaluations, taking to his work – he was a Professor at Oxford – reassuring his students, speaking to his neighbours, worrying about what might happen when I wasn't there, the endless night drives… it was exhausting. If the Gov' hadn't cut me some slack at work I'd have gone barmy.

"Watching him deteriorate was… heartbreaking…" she faltered, and paused for a moment until she could trust her voice again. "It was like… like his mind was a pane of safety glass that someone had thrown a rock through… and every day another fragment would fall away and I'd lose another piece of him. I was just sitting around waiting for that last piece to drop – the one that would take down the whole damn' lot…

"Some days – the good days – he was my Dad again… he knew who, where and when he was, he knew who _I _was…" she closed her eyes briefly, remembering. "Other times I'd have to remind him to eat, to _dress_ – he'd forget what day it was and take too much medication, or set the alarm when he was still in the house… hundreds of tiny, everyday things that we think are automatic…

"And sometimes he'd forget how old I was and ask me how I was getting on at school…" _or worse_, she added mentally, _ask about Simon_. "Or ask what time Mum would be getting home, and I'd have to tell him all over again. It broke his heart – I felt so guilty, sometimes I just pretended she was staying with friends until he forgot that he'd asked…"

She paused and took another drink, trying to pretend that she wasn't about to cry.

"How old were you when she died?" Morgan asked, gently.

"Six," said Grace heavily, meeting his eyes and recognising a familiar sadness there. "Drunk driver ran her off the road." She watched him nod slowly and added, "You?"

"Ten," he said, after a moment. "My Dad – shot in a convenience store. He was a hero," he said, and the hollow tone told her everything she needed to know.

"It doesn't help, does it?"

"No, not really," he said, smiling grimly.

They were silent for a moment, thinking of the children they had once been.

"We were on a list," Grace said eventually. "For a home – or a live-in carer. I couldn't be there _and_ be in the Met'… and Dad was so proud of me when I joined the police, leaving would have felt like letting him down.

"I had one of the neighbours cooking for him, keeping an eye on him while I was at work – Mrs Rutherford from next door." She smiled suddenly at the recollection. "He told me he thought she was sweet on him on one of his better days – made sure she heard him, too. They loved winding one another up…

"Anyway, one night I had to stay late – finishing an interrogation, some small-time thief who shot his partner in the leg by accident – I didn't get back 'til nearly midnight, and when I turned into the lane there was smoke everywhere…" she glanced up at him. "You know that feeling you get when you know something's wrong but you don't know why? I think I drove the rest of the way at about a hundred miles an hour…" she stared into her beer, watching tiny rivulets of condensation trickle down the glass.

"He'd gone into the garage to get the lawnmower out," she said quietly. "Christ only knows why, I mean it was gone eleven at night in _October_… Anyway, our lawnmower was this old beast of a thing – tended to take you across the grass instead of the other way around… petrol powered… and he'd brought out a candle instead of the torch, and he must have knocked the petrol can over, or something…"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Morgan close his eyes as he mentally filled in the blanks.

"By the time I got out of the car the whole garage was on fire," she said tightly. "And I could hear – I could hear him screaming. I have never heard anything like it. Wakes me up sometimes, if… Anyway, I couldn't get to him, it was so hot – and something exploded – and then – and then he stopped screaming.

"I don't remember much after that," she continued slowly, trying to bring it to mind. "Mrs Rutherford called the fire brigade, and someone must have taken me inside because I remember being sat at the top of the stairs, the way I did when they came to tell Dad that Mum was –" she swallowed, trying to control tears that she didn't want to shed – not here, not now. "And the Gov' showed up at about three in the morning, his great-coat over his pyjamas and dressing gown. I've no idea who called him… someone must have seen my ID I suppose.

"Anyway, he bundled me into his car – I remember Alice was there, his daughter. She's terrified of _everything_ – won't even go outside – we used to take it in turns to home-tutor her. But there she was, in a car in a completely different county in the middle of the night. She held my hand all the way back to London," she said in a small voice, missing her young friend. "I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up on the Gov's sofa."

"Grace…" said Morgan; she looked up, surprised. He hadn't used her first name before. "That's… damn'."

She nodded, feeling that that just about summed it up.

"When I got back to work…" she began absently twisting the glass in her hands. "People… It was different. People thought _I'd_ done it. _To_ him. That he'd been… inconvenient. Some of them even said it to my face." She paused. "I didn't react well."

"Hell," said Morgan flatly. "Who would've?"

"I couldn't stand the way people looked at me," she continued, almost to herself, "even the ones who never said anything. We'd be having a perfectly normal conversation and they'd give me this sideways look, like they were trying to figure out how I'd got away with it. It was…" she shook her head, "awful."

"Grace, I saw your face at the Cutler house," said Morgan firmly. "There's no way you'd ever do that to anyone – let alone your Dad."

"Well, thank you for saying that," she replied, with a painful smile.

"I mean it," he said, and patted her hand. "Anyway, you're here now – fresh start."

She nodded, swallowing hard.

"I'd… er – I'd appreciate it if –" she began, but Morgan waved it away.

"I won't say anythin'," he said. "Everybody's got a past."

"Thank you."

There was a faintly awkward silence that neither of them wanted to break. Morgan gave in first.

"You want another beer?" he asked, and Grace was a little surprised to see that her glass was empty. She drank beer slowly, as a rule, preferring the European ales and lagers to the American variety. "It's on me."

"Are you sure – I can –"

"Nah," he said, pulling the glass out of her unresisting fingers. "I got it."

Grace took the opportunity to pull herself together while Morgan was at the bar, aware that at some point in the near future she would be a complete mess. It had been good of Morgan to look out for her, but he'd seen enough of her vulnerable side for one night.

She watched him flirting with the waitress – with much less enthusiasm than before – and wondered if he'd still be looking out for her if he knew about Simon.

He sauntered back over with their drinks and the barmaid's number on the back of a napkin, and turned the talk to lighter things.


	8. Desole

**Chapter 8 – Desolé**

**Essential Listening – Desolé, by Damien Rice**

**0o0**

She wasn't entirely certain how she'd ended up on _this _street of all streets. She'd left Morgan at the bar, probably later than she should have, and started the long walk back. The heavens had opened about ten minutes later, but Grace had trudged on. The rain didn't bother her all that much, and tonight it had the added bonus of hiding her features from passers-by.

She knew that she had been crying, but only in that red-eyed, sore-throated kind of way – after the fact. She had meandered through the deserted FBI training campus, detouring through Hogan's Alley just to take up more time. Eventually, she had passed right by her own door, feeling restless and hopelessly lonely.

She remembered riding the Amtrak into Fairfax, watching the woods flash past with some half-formed idea of finding a place to eat. The rain hadn't let up as she'd left the station, wandering right past the door of every single restaurant and diner in the town. Her shoes squeaked wetly as she climbed the stairs of the apartment block, knocking on the door before she lost her nerve and walked all the way back to Quantico.

She was seriously considering doing just that when the door opened a crack, spilling warm, yellow light into the cold hall.

"Hi," she said, shyly. "Sorry. I know it's late…"

Reid stared at her, standing despondent and red-eyed in his hallway, dripping on the tiled floor.

"You're soaking wet," he said, opening the door a little wider.

Grace sniffed, aware of what a mess she must look.

"Come on," he said, stepping back to let her in.

0o0o0o0

Aaron walked up the driveway, hoping that the inhabitants were home. The large, white envelope in his jacket crackled softly as he knocked on the door. It felt oddly heavy somehow, weighing him down despite its apparent mass.

He hoped that he was doing the right thing – hoped that it would actually help the boy. He knew that if their positions had been reversed, he would have wanted someone to do the same for Jack.

He took a deep breath as a shape moved towards the front door, distorted by the frosted glass.

This was something that he had to do.

The right thing.

The door opened a crack and the woman behind it stared at him.

Even though he was off-duty, he held up his badge like a talisman.

"Mrs Abby?"

0o0o0

**Happy Yuletide folks – thought I'd give you a double feature this week! I'll be back in the new year – watch this space around the end of January. Hope you all have a fabulous time at whatever celebration you end up at :D **

**Have a good one!**


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